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Oscillating Sander

01-07-2003, 09:56 PM

I purchased the Rigid oscillating belt and drum sander. I am disappointed in the performance of the belt sander. Every piece I sand on the edge immediatley becomes wavy. Has anyone else experienced this. Am I trying to use the tool for something it wasn't designed for?

Comment

I am using the belt. For instance, I run a piece through the table saw and want to sand the blade marks off the cut side. I have squared the table of the sander to the sanding belt and then sand off the saw blade marks. I would think that the sander should be able to sand off the marks without loosing the squareness of the edge but it just doesn't seem capable. The drum part of this sander works great.

Comment

2 things.
I have noticed on mine, even though I have adjusted and readjusted and altered the holes for the little crome lock, it's very hard to keep the table at a perfect 90 degrees to the belt.
If it's loosing trueness along the cut, what I do is clamp a feather board to the table at the infeed side, and one about 1/16" closer to the belt at the outfeed end. This should help with the edge staying true.
Other than that, the table angle locking mechanism does need some upgrading.

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gtheller :
sanding off the saw marks without rounding the edge is i think almost impossible the sandpaper has enough give in it that it will overlap the edge on the stosk and the 90 degree edge will distort. If i have sawmarks on stock thats what the jointer is for. unless i misunderstood your problem. good luck bill

Comment

First off I have the exact same problem as UO_Woody, although my feelings are that it's not the table losing squareness, I firmly believe that the spindle itself is not square to the table. It's very noticable when sanding thicker stock and using a smaller spindle sander.

When using the belt for cleaning up rip cuts I also use feather boards which I believe helps keep an even pressure on the work/belt. Feed rate is very critical here as well, maintain an even feed rate, this is somewhat difficult in that the belt wants to pull the wood through fairly quick.

What grit belts are you using, I generally work with pine and have found that if I run the first pass through using 60 grit, and then change to a finer, 120, 150, and make one or 2 passes everything seems fine.

Finally hows your saw set up? If your getting allot of saw kerf I would suspect that your using the wrong blade and/or your blade is not square to the fence. There has been a huge amount of discussion on this so I will not even go there, run a search and you'll find more info than you can imagine.

Good Luck
Dave

It\'s not the quantity or quality of your tools that matters....<br />It\'s all in the firewood that\'s left over.....

Comment

Thanks Dave, I agree with what you say about the spindle. I'll put an indicator on the spindle and measure the run out. I'll post the results. If anyone else has the same machine with access to a dial indicator, I would be curios to know the spindle runout of your machine.

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I don't know what to expect of this unit but that sure doesn't sound to good. I have a over 30 year old all metal 4" belt sander that I fastened into a wooden jig I built to use it as an edge sander & I can sand edges flat with no ripples what so ever.

Use safety devices or you may not need gloves.

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I have the ridgid EB4424 oscillating edge belt/spindle sander and have been experiencing a problem with the spindle sander. The sanding drums appear to be to small for the sanding sleeves and the spindle shaft seems to small for the inside diameter of the sanding drums. Whenever I try to sand a piece of wood, the sanding sleeve are stopped by the pressure of the wood and the spindle or drum continues to turn.

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Glennq,
Are you using the supplied washers on top the sanding drums while sanding... The washers fit directly below the orange and brass fastener and above the black rubber spindle... The washers squish the rubber to the drum while providing traction from the output shaft to the black rubber spindle...
You should have gotten 3 different sizes of washers with your sander that will accommodate all of your round spindles...

See the washers, spindles and spindle spacers in the in the enclosed picture...

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Originally posted by Big Johnson: Glennq,
Are you using the supplied washers on top the sanding drums while sanding... The washers fit directly below the orange and brass fastener and above the black rubber spindle... The washers squish the rubber to the drum while providing traction from the output shaft to the black rubber spindle...
You should have gotten 3 different sizes of washers with your sander that will accommodate all of your round spindles...

See the washers, spindles and spindle spacers in the in the enclosed picture...

Comment

I've been setting it up as per the insructions. The Spindle knob tightens out before downward pressure is applied to the sanding drum. I tried placing a washer over the spindle shaft underneath the sanding drum in hopes of rectifing the problem. The sanding sleeve then stopped rotating when I applied sanding pressure. I think I'm destined for some warranty work. The Coupling(Item 20, page 26 in user manual) came out of the oscillating belt and I can't get it back in. Frustration.